The Queensland government has begun sounding out developers about turning the state’s public housing assets into potentially billions of dollars of new private and public housing.

Ernst & Young, on behalf of the Queensland government, has sent out a brief detailing 13 examples of public housing sites that could be sold for private development. Proceeds would be used to build public housing elsewhere.

Some of the public housing sites in the offering include riverfront property overlooking Brisbane City.

Pressure has been building on governments around Australia to change the way they manage public housing, especially where it is ageing and a burden on balance sheets.

Residential Development Council of Australia
chief executive
Caryn Kakas
said selling public housing property in exchange for funding new, more viable public housing projects was essential.

“State and territories across the country are facing constrained budgets and social housing is increasingly unviable for them," she said.

“There is recognition at the Council of Australian Governments to transfer stock as part of a range of options as part of shifting responsibility for delivering housing from government to the private sector."

The Queensland government’s commission of audit, released on Tuesday, recommended overhauling the way public housing was being funded, developed and maintained.

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The government agreed to “progressively transition the ownership and management of existing and new public housing stock to the non-government sector, with the scope and time frame for transition to be determined by the sector’s performance and governance capability".

Many attempts to sell public housing for new private sector developments have failed because of the outcry from tenants being displaced and the political ramifications. Queensland’s Minister for Housing and Public Works,
Tim Mander
, is already preparing for a fight.

“I would like to pre-empt what I am sure will be the hysterical scaremongering of [the state Opposition] and to reassure Queenslanders that this does not mean we will be embarking on some sort of wholesale sell-off of the state’s public housing stocks," he said.

“While we may see some small transfers of title where there is a clear benefit to the state, the government will retain a second mortgage over those properties and, more importantly, will retain ultimate control of the social housing system."

Queensland Shelter has cautiously welcomed the plan to outsource tenan­cy management of most of the state’s social housing by 2020 and has given qual­ified support for portfolio transfers. Some transfers have been a succ­ess­, such as the suburb of Coppers Plains, which was all public housing.

Cornerstone Living – a joint project between developer Consolidated Properties and the Queensland government – is to build about 1000 new dwellings over the next decade in place of outdated post-war social housing.